Sony BDP-S390 Blu-ray Disc Player with Wi-Fi (Black)

I got this to replace an older, much more expensive BR player from Pioneer. That one slowly came to a halt and wouldn't work any more. I didn't want to spend another $400 on a player, so I'd been using my son's PS3 for BR Disks but I could notice subtle differences (I'm a very visual person, I can pick up on things like this well). The way I figured, if I didn't like this unit I could put it into my bedroom where I only have a regular DVD player now so that I could watch BR disks there if I wanted. I'm keeping this unit right where it is though, it's that good.First off, it's a Sony. Sony has come a long way in recent years to get their name back up in the higher quality realms. They went south for a while....but changes within their company that I won't get into here I believe were good ones in the long run. Their quality of both video and audio have been climbing upwards for quite a while and I've gotten to trust them again.Just so you understand what I'm viewing this on and testing this with, I have an LG 47" 1080p TV, a high quality Denon receiver and 7.1 surround sound speakers. Everything might not be absolute top of the line but they're all excellent for what they do.When I took this unit out of the box, my son's first response was "Wow, it looks so much like my PS3!". It does, just a bit smaller. Not a large unit at all, so it looks lonely on the shelf where my old, massive Pioneer player was. Plugged it into the wall and used the same HDMI cable that went into the old one (it plus from there into the Denon Receiver, which controls the signal back to the TV).When I turned it on the first thing I noticed is that it certainly is a Sony....the menu screens look VERY similar to those on the PS3. I appreciate that kind of consistency in a company. After going through their handy walkthrough setup process which asks you some general questions about how you are going to use the unit, and setting up the WiFi (yes, this is built in you don't require a cable but you could use one if you wanted), I did a little more fine tuning and exploring of the menus.I use Netflix, I've been using the service through my TiVo (that's right, I have tons of electronics and gadgets...lol), but thought I'd try it through the Sony BR player instead. To set that up you have to go through the menu on the player first, and then it instructs you to go online to sign in. Do that, (took 3 minutes) and your BR player immediately works for Netflix. I'm sure this is the process for other services I'm not using. The best part is, I actually noticed that this player seems to work better than the TiVo - it gets to my movies and shows quicker, which probably means it's downloading faster over the WiFi. This is my new Netflix player as well now.Although my Pioneer had amazing quality video and sound, one problem I had with it was that it was very slow to boot up BR Disks. It could be a few minutes from when I hit the power button to when anything would start playing on the TV. This was kind of annoying, even after years of use. First, this Sony unit boots up quicker as-is....but if you turn on the option to have it fast boot (which uses a small amount of more power because it's "always on", even though the lights on the machine aren't on - it's how it prepares to start up disks quicker), it is super fast. I'm really happy with this feature.So as previously mentioned my Pioneer was super high quality for video and sound. Nothing else I tried ever matched it before, until now. Honestly, I can't tell the difference in picture quality or sound quality from this little unit. My sub-woofer rattles the windows just like it did before. My surround sound speakers have me looking over my shoulder at subtle times during movies, etc. Granted, I do have the Denon Receiver which helps, but if the quality coming out of the original unit isn't good, it would be noticeable (for example, with the PS3 which wasn't quite as good as this one). The picture quality is spot on, another thing I noticed was different about the PS3 - the video quality wasn't as good as the Pioneer. It was good, just not amazing. This unit is just as good as the Pioneer was, which overall was the most shocking discovery for me.If I had to gripe about anything with this unit it would be the buttons on the front. They're pretty flush and hard to see what they are labeled unless you are close and there's a lot of light. This is really, really minor and unimportant for the most part, unless you're someone who uses the buttons on the unit as much or more than the remote.In conclusion, I never expected this unit to be as good as it is. I'm very happy with it and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a BR player. It's so inexpensive for the quality you receive.-D

Ok, where to begin. This item is described as a blu-ray player with wi-fi. Those two items seem to work very well. Set up was easy. Found my Linksys router and configured it by clicking on the wi-fi protected setup button on my router after the tv told me to. You can do it manually by adding the router pass phrase but this was so much simpler. After going through the setup and finishing it, it told me an update was available, so I clicked on update and it started and showed a progress line and said don't shut off power. Progress bar seem to be going really slow so I left the room and when I came back tv and blu-ray player were off. Don't know if that's normal for an update and was a little concerned but when I turned it back on every thing seemed to be fine and it said I had the latest update.First thing I did is to play a blu-ray disc, since this is the main reason of this purchase. Would have to give this function 5 stars. Plays flawlessly. Great picture. I choose the option during setup to always leave the machine in standby mode to start playback faster.The second reason I purchased this player was for the ability to stream Amazon prime movies. Setup was simple and straightforward. Player gives you a code to register the device on the computer at Amazon's site. Have watched 4 or 5 movies now and they run perfectly even though the network settings in the option menu says I'm only getting a 20 to 40% connection rate. That had me a bit worried because I didn't want to see a lot of buffering while trying to watch a streaming video from Amazon. It doesn't appear to be a problem but if it becomes one I'm sending this back because my router's signal is more than powerful to reach the player. I can set my laptop and kindle right next to the player and get a signal from the router with full bars. Hopefully this will not become an issue.As of now the only pay service I have is Amazon Prime so I didn't try any of the other services like Hulu. I would hope and assume they would be as easy to set up as amazon was. I did use the YouTube app and was able to view videos just fine. Navigation is a bit rough because of the onscreen text input program you have to use to input url's or search requests. I'm not planning on using this app much so wasn't to annoyed. I also tried the Web Browser app and the Facebook app. If this is a big selling point for you I think you are going to be disappointed. Pages seem to take a long time to load. Navigation within the pages by using the remote is really time consuming. Trying to input any text on a page, like a search query or a password will likely drive you mad over time. Someone mentioned something about adding a wireless keyboard in another review but I don't know if they had success with that. Others have mentioned you can control it with an app on your iphone or android phone and then use the keyboard on your phone to type in text. If I was going to use the web function on this player much, I would definitely look into that, but I'm not.Another selling point of this player that swayed me into purchasing it was the ability to use a DLNA server to see and play music and video files from your computer. The easiest way to do this if you are using a Windows computer is by using Windows Media Player which comes bundled with most windows computers. I think version 11 and 12 both have the ability to act as a DLNA server. I won't go into how to set it up, but it's very easy. You can google "How do I set up WMP to be a DLNA server" and you find all you need. If you set it up correctly you'll see a new icon under the Video and Music settings on the onscreen list of the blu-ray menu. Found and played my music. Most are in mp3 format. All seemed to play fine. Now playing my videos off the computer had issues. I can see all my videos but getting them all to play is a work in progress. All my vids are in .avi format. It can see all of them, but the player will only play some of them and I can't figure out why it will play some and not others. I can play everyone of my avi movies in Windows Media Player on my computer but once I stream it to the Blu-ray player some will get a message saying "can not play file. may not be a supported file type or may be corrupt" So this is obviously an issue with the player. I chose avi's to convert my videos to because it gives decent quality and can be seen and recognized by almost every player I've ever used. So I'm a bit disappointed with this feature. My LG HDTV has a usb port that has played every avi file that I've plugged in and more. So I can still play movies this way but I was hoping to get them all in one place and save transferring back and forth to a usb stick. I'll keep playing with this and if I find an answer I'll post it here.Ok, to sum up I'd say this is a very good purchase. The price point is excellent, especially if what you want is a blu-ray player with wireless capability to stream pay per movie and tv services. Really that alone should get 5 stars. At this price that would be more than fair. But,,, what I think they did was try to make this a swiss army knife of blu-ray players and add every darn capability from every player on the market. Unfortunately most of the capabilities it adds on are frustrating to use, to be kind. That being said, would I recommend this to a friend, YES. If they wanted the main functions, but not if they wanted a web browser and dlna capable device that could handle multiple video formats.Update 6-5-12 Found what file types that the sony supplies native support for through DLNA. For picutes it's JPEG , for music it support file types, MP3 & LPCM and for video it support MPEG-2 PS & MPEG-2 TS. I'll provide the link below and also their instruction on how to set up the DLNA server.Update 9-16-12 Just thought I'd give a 3 month update. Still very happy with the player. All disks I have triedhave worked in the player, including non retail ones. Have also subscribed to Hulu and set up was as easy asthe Amazon Prime set-up. Still highly recommend this blu ray player.Update 12-14-12 Thought I'd give a 6 month update because I know I always appreciate people that update their reviews as opposed to the folks that review an item the day they get it and say it's the worst thing they ever saw or it's the best thing since sliced bread,<g> and then you never hear from them again.Still super happy with this purchase. It's nice to get an electronic item that works like it should and doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to set it up. Should really give this 5 stars but I guess I'm a tough reviewer. One of the only things that's stopping me is the dlna aspect of the player, only being able to support a select few movie formats that can be streamed from your computer. Mainly mpeg is supported. I can play other movie formats occasionally, but it's hit and miss.The player has updated twice over the internet since I got it. I don't know what the updates did specifically but I do know I have more apps now than I did initially. I saw Crackle on it the other day and didn't know much about it, but I tried it out and watched a movie for free with no sign ups. They insert an add in the movie about every 10 minutes or so. Not very bothersome or annoying. I'm sure they don't have the library of a Netflix but a nice way to see a movie that's been out a while. I'll use that app again I'm sure. Starting to wonder why I still need Dish!Blu-ray disks and regular dvd's play as well today as when I got it. Have never lost my internet connection either, like some other blu-ray players on Amazon that I read the reviews about.I still say get it, don't think you'll find anything better for the price out there. Happy Holidays!Update 12-28-12 This is important information regarding the DLNA aspect of this player. Leonardo left a comment letting us know that Sony does have it's own DLNA server software called Homestream. I installed it and all my media is now playing on the blu-ray player. If you have avi's, mp4's, mkv's, vobs that you haven't been able to play, this should work. Google 'Sony Homestream' to find the software. Thanks again Leaonardo for that information!Update 8-27-13 Still have it. Still working. Still completely happy with it!